I got an audit notice once. The agent never answered his phone or my voicemails. Ended up having to actually drive down to the Federal Building and hunt down his cubicle on the deadline date.
That said, the process was pretty smooth, and since I wasn't trying to pull any tax shenanigans, not all that upsetting. There are any number of corporations whose customer service is far worse than the IRS's.
I made an error on my tax form one year causing the IRS to say I owed a whole year of taxes, and I was able to resolve it amicably even after they realized they weren’t going to be getting any money from me. When you are in accounts payable, the service does get better.
I’m in one of those now again because we forgot to file the 1099s for the RSUs sold to satisfy my wife’s ordinary income tax on RSU grants. Of course, since it was sold to pay ordinary income tax the cost basis adjusts all the way up, they haven’t gotten back to me yet.
Every interaction with the IRS I’ve had has been top notch, if sometimes excruciatingly slow.
That includes the “you forgot cost basis in day trading so you made fifty million dollars” letter a friend got, to the “you are an idiot and filed wrong, here’s the few grand we owe you unless you really want to contest” because of forgetting withholding.
That said, the process was pretty smooth, and since I wasn't trying to pull any tax shenanigans, not all that upsetting. There are any number of corporations whose customer service is far worse than the IRS's.